Kannapolis Middle School overcrowded

KANNAPOLIS — Jan McCombs has taught math in Kannapolis City Schools for 26 years, so it would seem there are few things she hasn’t seen.

But not until this year did McCombs see 30 students in one class, the number she teaches in pre-algebra.

Even for a veteran teacher, that can be daunting.

“When you’ve got 30 kids in this room, it’s a little bit overwhelming,”McCombs said last week, pointing out extra desks she squeezed in beside her own. “I go home exhausted from trying to manage it.”

In addition to the extra desks, the school has hired two extra teachers in sixth and seventh grades, and Dr. Chip Buckwell anticipates needing two more teachers in eighth grade next year.

He just doesn’t know where they’ll teach.

“There is not a place to put two additional teachers at this minute,”he said.

Enrollment at Kannapolis Middle had climbed to 1,061 last week, including 14 students attending Kannapolis Middle because enrollment at the Cabarrus County’s crowded schools have been capped.

The total is 88 more than the capacity of the school under state standards, and 16 more than the “stress capacity” at which the school must start using non-classroom space for teaching.

Buckwell said the school has reached that point, parking its fourth mobile classroom out back a week after school started, building walls in classrooms to create more, but smaller, rooms and using some very non-traditional spaces for teaching.

“We’re using every available space,” he said. “We’ve got kids everywhere.”

Tucked away at the end of a long sixth-grade hallway is the room designated for English as a Second Language instruction.The sign on the door identifies the narrow space as a Team Room. Buckwell explains that staff members had used the room for parent-teacher conferences and storing books and other materials.

The shelves have been unbolted from the walls and the books and materials moved out. Teacher Erin Messmer said she doesn’t feel cramped, with up to six students at a time.

“It’s perfect for my needs,”she said, standing between two tables set up along the walls for her students. “I do have a lot of kids to serve, but at this time, we’re doing fine the way we are.”

Some students don’t find the conditions uncomfortable, either, although many barely have time to digest breakfast before lunch begins just after 10 a.m., and they walk shoulder-to-shoulder through the halls at class change.

“If anything, it makes it better,” said seventh-grader Anna Seagroves, a member of one of the 30-student pre-algebra classes. “When you have so many kids in a class, then I think that makes it more challenging for the teacher, and that means it’s more than likely going to be challenging for us.”

It’s only going to get more challenging, school officials say. While the current fourth- and fifth-grade classes in Kannapolis City Schools are a little smaller than the middle school grades, there are 356 third-graders and this year’s first-grade class numbers 392.

With development of several subdivisions underway in the city and more on the horizon — once city leaders lift a drought-forced ban on residential development — education officials expect waves of students to hit the school system in coming years.

A study done to anticipate water needs estimates the county population will double from its current 120,000 within the next couple of decades. Some of that growth undoubtedly will affect Kannapolis City Schools, Buckwell said.

“Those kids are going to have to go to school somewhere,” he said.

Based on numbers produced by a task force assembled to look at the city’s projected growth and how that will affect schools, the 4,376-student system could grow by more than 25 percent by 2005.

The Kannapolis Board of Education asked Cabarrus County for $22 million this year to expand two elementary schools and build a new school that initially would serve elementary and middle school grades.

Some of the system’s elementary schools face overcrowding, also. Fred L. Wilson Elementary already has received two new mobile classroom units this year, and will receive two more, Superintendent Dr. Jo Anne Byerly said this week.

Commissioners denied the request. County Manager Frank Clifton said he doesn’t believe the school system will grow as quickly as anticipated and the projections don’t warrant the new school. He again raised the possibility of merging the system with the Cabarrus and Rowan-Salisbury school systems.

Kannapolis officials have repeatedly rejected the notion that the city system should be absorbed into the larger systems. They cite Kannapolis’ performance on state testing and the relatively small average size of school districts around the nation.

Byerly said the Kannapolis school system will likely request the new school in its capital budget again next year.

“I do plan to recommend next budget year that the board request funding to build a new school to alleviate overcrowding at the middle school,”she said. “We think it’s important to meet our facilities needs.”

Buckwell says teachers do their best to offset the crowded conditions, but the bigger classes can still take a toll on instruction, sometimes costing valuable time.

Losing five minutes of instructional time a day of over a 180-day schedule amounts to losing 10 days at the end of the year, and Buckwell said students and teachers can’t afford to lose those 10 days.

“People criticize the public schools as not doing the right things for kids,” he said. “It’s hard to do all the right things you can for kids if you don’t have the facilities to do it in.”

McCombs, the veteran teacher, agrees.

“It’s frustrating,”she said

Contact Scott Jenkins at 704-797-4248 or sjenkins@salisburypost.com .